Altbachisches Archiv, also Alt-Bachische Archiv (ABA, old-Bachian archive), is a collection of 17th-century vocal music, most of which was written by members of the Bach family.
Johann Ambrosius Bach, Johann Sebastian's father, supposedly started to collect compositions by his relatives. Johann Sebastian Bach's obituary starts with an overview of the composers whose works are contained in the Altbachisches Archiv. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian's son and co-author of his obituary, retained the collection and gave it its name. After his death the largest part of the collection came, via Georg Pölchau , in the possession of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. All nine motets of the Sing-Akademie's part of the ABA collection, including BWV 1164, at the time attributed to Johann Christoph Bach, were published in the early 1820s. [1]
The manuscripts of two compositions contained in the Sing-Akademie's part of the ABA collection were sold to the Royal Library in Berlin (later renamed as Berlin State Library): thus BNB I/B/11 and BWV 1164 were no longer in the Sing-Akademie's archives by the end of the 19th century. [2] In 1935 Max Schneider, recovering ABA manuscripts scattered in the Sing-Akademie's archive, [3] published a selection of these compositions, an edition which was reprinted in 1966. [4] ABA numbers derive from this publication in two volumes. [4] The original manuscripts of the Sing-Akademie's archive went lost during the Second World War, [5] only to be rediscovered in Ukraine in 1999, after which they were returned to the Sing-Akademie, which in turn deposited the recovered manuscripts in the Berlin State Library for conservation. [6] [7]
The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis is a catalogue of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was first published in 1950, edited by Wolfgang Schmieder. The catalogue's second edition appeared in 1990. An abbreviated version of that second edition, known as BWV2a, was published in 1998.
The Neumeister Collection is a compilation of 82 chorale preludes found in a manuscript copy produced by Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1757–1840). When the manuscript was rediscovered at Yale University in the 1980s it appeared to contain 31 previously unknown early chorale settings by Johann Sebastian Bach, which were added to the BWV catalogue as Nos. 1090–1120, and published in 1985.
"Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden" is an aria from Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's opera Diomedes, which was first staged on 16 November 1718. The aria is best known as "Bist du bei mir," BWV 508, a version for voice and continuo found as No. 25 in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227, is a motet by Johann Sebastian Bach. The longest and most musically complex of Bach's motets, it is set in eleven movements for up to five voices. It is named after the Lutheran hymn "Jesu, meine Freude" with words by Johann Franck, first published in 1653. The motet contains the six stanzas of the hymn in its odd-numbered movements. The hymn tune by Johann Crüger appears in all of these movements in different styles of chorale settings. The text of the motet's even-numbered movements is taken from the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, a passage that influenced key Lutheran teachings. The hymn, written in the first person with a focus on an emotional bond with Jesus, forms a contrasting expansion of the doctrinal biblical text. Bach set both texts alternating with and complementing each other, in a structure of symmetries on different layers.
Komm, Jesu, komm, BWV 229, is a motet by Johann Sebastian Bach, with a text by Paul Thymich. It was composed in Leipzig, and received its first performance by 1731–1732.
Most of Johann Sebastian Bach's extant church music in Latin—settings of the Mass ordinary and of the Magnificat canticle—dates from his Leipzig period (1723–50). Bach started to assimilate and expand compositions on a Latin text by other composers before his tenure as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, and he continued to do so after he had taken up that post. The text of some of these examples by other composers was a mixture of German and Latin: also Bach contributed a few works employing both languages in the same composition, for example his early Kyrie "Christe, du Lamm Gottes".
Sacred concerto is a 17th-century genre of sacred music, characterized as settings of religious texts requiring both vocal soloists and obbligato instrumental forces for performance. Starting from Italian models, the genre flourished primarily in Germany. It is a broad term for various genres of chamber concerto for a small number of voices and instruments popular in Germany during the 17th century and prefiguring the late baroque church cantata and solo sacred cantata forms.
Wer ist der, so von Edom kömmt is a pasticcio Passion oratorio based on compositions by Carl Heinrich Graun, Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Sebastian Bach and others. The pasticcio was assembled around 1750.
BWV Anh., abbreviation of Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis Anhang, is a list of lost, doubtful, and spurious compositions by, or once attributed to, Johann Sebastian Bach.
Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn, BWV 1164, is a motet for SATB double choir which was attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach when it was first published in 1802. Around 1823 the motet was published as a composition by Johann Christoph Bach, Johann Sebastian's father's cousin, after which its attribution became a matter of discussion among scholars. The motet consists of two movements: the oldest extant manuscript of its first movement was partly written by Johann Sebastian, in 1712, or early 1713 at the latest. Its second movement is without doubt a chorale harmonisation by Johann Sebastian composed before c. 1735, when a version of this setting was copied in the Dietel manuscript, but it is uncertain when, and by whom, it was added to the first movement.
Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt is a three-movement pasticcio motet for double SATB choir. It includes music by Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach. The text of the motet is a German paraphrase of Psalm 100.
The Kyrie–Gloria Mass for double choir, BWV Anh. 167, is a mass composition in G major by an unknown composer. The work was likely composed in the last quarter of the 17th century. The composition has two sections, a Kyrie and a Gloria, each subdivided in three movements. It has twenty-two parts for performers: twelve parts for singers, and ten for instrumentalists, including strings, wind instruments and organ. Johann Sebastian Bach may have encountered the work around 1710, when he was employed in Weimar. In the 1730s he produced a manuscript copy of the Mass.
Johann Sebastian Bach started composing cantatas around 1707, when he was still an organist in Arnstadt. The first documented performances of his work took place in Mühlhausen, where he was appointed in 1708.
Bach Digital, developed by the Bach Archive in Leipzig, is an online database which gives access to information on compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and members of his family. Early manuscripts of such compositions are a major focus of the website, which provides access to high-resolution digitized versions of many of these. Scholarship on manuscripts and versions of compositions is summarized on separate pages, with references to scholarly sources and editions. The database portal has been online since 2010.
The organ sonatas, BWV 525–530 by Johann Sebastian Bach are a collection of six sonatas in trio sonata form. Each of the sonatas has three movements, with three independent parts in the two manuals and obbligato pedal. The collection was put together in Leipzig in the late 1720s and contained reworkings of prior compositions by Bach from earlier cantatas, organ works and chamber music as well as some newly composed movements. The sixth sonata, BWV 530, is the only one for which all three movements were specially composed for the collection. When played on an organ, the second manual part is often played an octave lower on the keyboard with appropriate registration. Commentators have suggested that the collection might partly have been intended for private study to perfect organ technique, some pointing out that its compass allows it to be played on a pedal clavichord. The collection of sonatas is generally regarded as one of Bach's masterpieces for organ. The sonatas are also considered to be amongst his most difficult compositions for the instrument.
The Dietel manuscript, D-LEb Peters Ms. R 18, also known as the Dietel Collection and, in German, Choralsammlung Dietel, is the oldest extant manuscript with a large collection of four-part chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach. It contains 149 of Bach's chorale harmonisations and originated around 1735. The music in the manuscript was copied by Johann Ludwig Dietel, one of Bach's pupils from the Thomasschule.
Der Gerechte kömmt um, BWV 1149, is a motet for SSATB singers and instrumental ensemble, which, for its music, is based on the five-part a cappella motet Tristis est anima mea attributed to Johann Kuhnau, and has the Luther Bible translation of Isaiah 57:1–2 as text. The arrangement of the Latin motet, that is, transposing it to E minor, adjusting its music to the new text, and expanding it with an instrumental score for two traversos, two oboes, strings and basso continuo, is attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. The setting is found in a manuscript copy, likely written down in the 1750s, of Wer ist der, so von Edom kömmt, a Passion oratorio which is a pasticcio based on compositions by, among others, Carl Heinrich Graun, Georg Philipp Telemann and Bach. Likely Der Gerechte kömmt um existed as a stand-alone motet, for example for performance on Good Friday or at a funeral, before being adopted in the pasticcio.